Episerver Find
User Guide
Copyright © Episerver AB
Episerver Find User Guide update 15-5
Table of Contents | 3
Table of contents
Table of contents
3
Introduction
6
Features, licenses and releases
6
Online user guide
7
Copyright notice
7
What's new
8
Episerver Find
9
Feature summary
10
Features in Find "standard"
10
Features in Find Connections Edition
11
What is search optimization?
12
Learning by doing
12
The new website
12
The growing website
13
Automatic search optimization
13
Automatic landing pages
13
Adaptive navigation
14
Guided search
14
Optimizing search manually
14
Search phrase does not match wording in content
14
Promote selected content
14
Visitors are not clicking search result links
14
No search results returned because the content is missing
14
Content searched for is not on your website but visitors assume it is
15
Returned results do not contain the search phrase
15
Relevant content is found but not displayed at the top
15
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4 | Episerver Find User Guide update 15-5
Analyzing search statistics
16
Manually optimizing search results
18
The optimization view
18
What to look for
19
Promoting content using best bets
19
Adding best bets
21
Editing best bets
22
Deleting best bets
23
Effect of publication and expiration dates on best bets
23
Best bets for catalog entries
23
Adding related queries
25
Adding synonyms for similar phrases
26
Unidirectional versus bidirectional synonyms
Example
27
27
Adding Synonyms
28
Autocomplete
29
Sources of autocomplete suggestions
29
Adding, editing and deleting autocomplete phrases
31
Changing the order of autocomplete phrases
31
Optimizing multiple sites and languages
32
Websites, languages and indexes
32
Configuring Find
37
Boosting results through properties
38
Changing weight settings
38
Clearing the index and reindexing
40
Clearing the index
40
Re-indexing the website
41
Removing statistics
41
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Table of Contents | 5
Adding connectors
42
Configuring connectors
42
Viewing connectors and indexing jobs
43
Exploring the index
44
Access rights
46
Index
47
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6 | Episerver Find User Guide update 15-5
Introduction
The user guide is intended for editors, administrators, marketers and merchandisers, working with tasks
as described in Roles and tasks. The user guide may also be helpful for developers when configuring
and setting up Episerver websites. Refer to Episerver World for developer guides and technical documentation.
Features, licenses and releases
This user guide covers the latest releases for the entire Episerver platform.
Episerver CMS is the core part of the Episerver platform providing advanced content
creation and publishing features for all types of website content. CMS features are
available in all Episerver installations.
Episerver Commerce adds complete e-commerce capabilities to the core functionality in CMS. Commerce requires additional license activation.
Add-ons extend the Episerver capabilities with features like advanced search, multivariate testing, and social media integration. Some add-ons are free, others require
license activation. Add-ons by Episerver are covered in this documentation.
Due to frequent feature releases, this user guide may describe functionality that is not yet available on your website. Refer to What's new to find out in which area and release a specific feature became available.
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Introduction | 7
Online user guide
This user guide is also available as an online help that opens in a web browser. The online help is either
accessed from within the Episerver platform or from Episerver World.
Copyright notice
Copyright © 1996 – 2015 Episerver AB. All rights reserved.
Changes to the contents, or partial copying of the contents, may not be done without permission. The
document may be freely distributed in its entirety, either digitally or in printed format, to all users of
Episerver Software. We assume no liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in the content of
this document. We reserve the right to alter functionality and technical system requirements. Episerver
is a registered trademark of Episerver AB.
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8 | Episerver Find User Guide update 15-5
What's new
The Episerver user guide describes features in the Episerver platform, including CMS for content management and Commerce for e-commerce management, as well as add-ons from Episerver. New features are continuously made available through Episerver updates.
This user guide (15-5) describes features added up until and including update 89 for Episerver.
Refer to Episerver World for previous user guide versions.
Area
Features and updates
Workflows removed (update 81). Replaced by the The project feature.
Possibility to comment on projects and project items (update 82), tag
users and receive e-mail notifications (update 87).
Episerver forms [BETA] - new add-on for creating block-based forms
(update 89).
Connect for SharePoint - updated features for synchronization of content
(update 87).
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Episerver Find | 9
Episerver Find
Episerver Find requires an additional license and an index. See Episerver World for details
about installation and configuration. After installation, Find appears on the global menu in edit
view.
Most site visitors abandon a website if they cannot quickly find what they are looking for. With increasing information volumes, menu navigation is no longer sufficient, so search becomes critical for locating
information. Episerver Find adds powerful search functionality to websites. Search encompasses internet search engines (like Bing) and a website's search function.
Search optimization increases the chances of attracting visitors to your website, keeping them there,
and getting them to complete an action, such as registering or shopping. Episerver Find bases search
functionality on visitor search behavior and website statistics. Using this information, you can add automatic landing pages, adaptive navigation and guided search to increase website traffic and boost conversion rates.
This section shows "search administrators", such as editors and Episerver site administrators, how to
set up and use Find. The documentation also tells developers how to configure and set up search features.
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10 | Episerver Find User Guide update 15-5
Feature summary
With Episerver Find, you can develop customized functionality, such as filtering and faceted navigation,
based on content properties, such as price or color. Find is based on an index service and interfaces,
which can be cloud-based or installed on-premises. Find supports multiple languages.
Episerver Find indexes any type of website object, not only web pages. As soon as authors publish content, Find pushes data to the search engine, making new or updated content available in near real-time.
Features in Find "standard"
View and analyze search statistics for your websites, and use the statistics to optimize search.
Explore the site index to see what has been indexed and when, and use this information to customize search features.
Promote selected content (best bets), and manage search phrases without hits.
Add related queries to guide visitors in their search for specific content.
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Define synonyms for similar search phrases.
Weight content properties to boost search results as desired.
Features in Find Connections Edition
Episerver Find Connections Edition lets you add connectors, which index external content that is
related to but not part of your website. For purchasing information about the Connections Edition, see
http://www.episerver.com/Hosting/order-episerver-find/. To learn how to use it, see Adding connectors.
See the Getting started section in the CMS Editor User Guide for information about logging in,
accessing features and working with the Episerver user interface.
Help in Find
Episerver Find's user interface provides onscreen documentation. To access it, click Show Help in the
upper right corner.
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What is search optimization?
Search optimization helps site visitors quickly find the right website content. This is closely related to
search engine optimization (SEO), often referred to as "the process of improving the visibility of website
content in the search results." As a Web page's search rank increases, your website receives more visitors.
Episerver Find lets you develop customized functionality to create automatic landing pages and different types of adaptive navigation with minimal effort. While Episerver Find bases its SEO strategies
on site visitor statistics, you can manually implement search optimization on targeted content to
enhance the search experience.
Learning by doing
Most of Find's automatic SEO is based on queries made by site visitors. As the number of queries
grows, Episerver Find "learns" and bases search suggestions on previous successful queries.
The new website
When developers set up a website and configure search, they use the programming interface to develop
custom filters (along with built-in filters) and faceted search features. Because the site is new, search
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What is search optimization? | 13
optimization has few statistics, so you can help visitors by adding search phrase suggestions. See
also: Autocomplete.
The growing website
As your website matures and accumulates more search data, use search statistics to analyze search
activity. Optimization evolves into monitoring, fine tuning, and promoting content to deliver the right content to visitors.
Automatic search optimization
You can attract visitors to your website and guide them to rfelevant content by coding the following features and tagging content properties.
Automatic landing pages
When creating a campaign, you usually make significant editorial efforts to set up landing pages and
make desired content appear in various places of the website. Tagging and search criteria let you create
landing pages that dynamically display relevant content.
An automatic landing page (as in the example above) is actually a search page with a small editorial
area at the top. Episerver Find drives search results through content tagging. Site visitors can narrow
down search results using the facets to the right.
Episerver Find provides an SEO-friendly URL for the dynamic landing page, based on facets selected
by the visitor. For example, if you search for sweatshirt, the returned URL includes associated search
facets, such as the following ../search/sweatshirt/women/hoodies.
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Adaptive navigation
Website navigation is often static and based on a content structure that is well-known to editors but less
intuitive to visitors. With search criteria, you can create navigation that displays personalized content
based on what is known about the visitor, such as content relations or a registered profile.
Guided search
Episerver Find can suggest search phrases automatically, based on the behavior of site visitors. For
instance, searching for page returns people searching for "page" also searched for "web page".
The autocomplete feature also provides guided search.
Optimizing search manually
Although Episerver Find performs search optimization automatically, you should regularly monitor
search activities on your website, to fine-tune search performance and spot discrepancies. You may
want override system suggestions to promote specific content.
You perform manual search optimization from the optimization view. Search optimization may also
include modifying website content to achieve desired results. The following scenarios demonstrate how
search optimization actions can guide visitors to appropriate content.
Search phrase does not match wording in content
For instance, "basket" instead of "cart". Help out by adding a synonym.
Promote selected content
Use best bets to promote selected pages' content. For instance, if a visitor searches for Christmas
cards, a Christmas special offer appears at the top of the search results.
Visitors are not clicking search result links
Low-click frequency may not be a problem—it can indicate that search results provide adequate information. But it also may indicate that the information is not attractive enough. Work with the content to
ensure that an appropriate description appears in search results and SEO requirements are met. Or, create a best bet with a custom title and description.
No search results returned because the content is missing
Use search statistics to discover if needed content is missing from your website. This requires a strong
understanding of the content. Create the missing content and ensure it appears in search results.
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Content searched for is not on your website but visitors assume it is
If visitors make frequent searches for content on a related website, add a connector to index that site's
content and merge it with your site's search results.
Returned results do not contain the search phrase
Add the search phrase to the content, or add synonyms, which let site visitors retrieve content without
knowing exact wording.
Relevant content is found but not displayed at the top
Work with the content to verify that SEO requirements are met. For example, make sure the page has a
relevant title, correct and descriptive meta information, and an accurate modification date. Also, make
sure page has relevant keywords and search phrases. Use specific keywords instead of broad, widelyused terms. For example, agile commerce (instead of commerce) significantly narrows results.
For more information, refer to general guidelines about optimizing content for search engines, such as
Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.
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Analyzing search statistics
Episerver Find collects statistics from site visitor activity and displays them in the Statistics View,
where you can analyze the activity.
Statistics are scarce for a new website, but as your site matures and captures more search behavior,
you can analyze the information to optimize the search experience.
You need specific access rights to access features in Episerver Find.
The statistics view displays popular searches during a selected time period and reveals if matching content was found. You can filter search information by time interval, website, and language.
Most frequent searches. Phrases searched for most often.
Searches without hits. Phrases most often searched for and for which no results were found.
Searches without relevant hits. Searches that generated hits but had a low click-through rate.
Phrases that are most frequently searched for and for which search results are clicked the least
appear at the top.
If you click a search phrase in a list, a new window appears, containing this information.
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matching search results (when using Most frequent searches view)
other searches performed by the visitor who submitted that search phrase
From Statistics View, you can select one or more search phrases and switch to the optimization interface to work with best bets, related queries, or synonyms.
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Manually optimizing search results
Although Episerver Find automatically optimizes the search, you should regularly monitor your site's
search activities to fine-tune performance and identify trends. At times, you may want to override system suggestions or promote specific content.
When you perform search optimization, work closely with stakeholders such as the website owner, marketers, content editors, and developers. Tasks depend on whether the site is new or mature because of
the amount of statistics with which you have to work.
You can perform search optimization for multiple websites and different languages from the same user
interface. To optimize search effectively, you must be familiar with your website content.
You need specific access rights to access Episerver Find features.
The optimization view
To access Optimization View, from edit view, click Find > Manage > Optimization.
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Manually optimizing search results | 19
Use Optimization View to manually optimize search. You can select search phrases in the Statistics
view, and transfer them to Optimization View. Or, you can manually enter search phrases into Optimization View's Phrases field.
What to look for
Frequently-searched phrases indicate "hot" topics, content that visitors assume is on your website.
Search phrases without hits reveal either content missing from your website or a need to improve
a content item's ranking in search results.
If visitors search for content that is related to but not stored on your website, consider adding a
connector to index an external website.
Search phrases with low click-through rates may indicate that the content description is sufficient, or that the title or description is not attractive enough. In the latter case, create a best bet
with a custom title and description to promote the content.
By clicking a search phrase in the list, you see other phrases that the same visitor searched for.
For example, if someone searching for project plans also searched for planning and tracking
projects, respond by adding missing content, or creating synonyms or best bets for these
phrases.
Next steps
Using the Statistics View data, try these content optimization tasks.
Improve the content on your website
Promote content using best bets
Suggest related search phrases
Add synonyms for similar phrases
Create editorial autocomplete suggestions
Promoting content using best bets
Episerver Find lets you promote content by adding best bets, search phrases that deliver selected Web
content to the top of search results. Use best bets to provide answers to common questions, or to create sponsored links such as in an e-commerce site.
For example, if a search phrase has a low click-through rate, that might indicate that the content title or
description is not compelling. Use a best bet to assign a custom title and description to promote that
content. By customizing title and description, you optimize the site visitor's search experience.
A best bet's search phrase does not need to occur in the assigned content—you are simply mapping
one or more phrases to an internal or external Web page, which appears above organic search results.
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You can style a best bet to distinguish it from organic results. For example, notify visitors that a link is
sponsored.
A developer needs to implement this feature in your website's styling.
You can define best bets for a specific language and a specific website.
Examples of best bets
You are running a Christmas campaign. When a visitor searches for Christmas cards, you want
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Manually optimizing search results | 21
the Christmas special offer page to appear at the top of search results.
Link search phrases to content that you believe visitors want. For example, for a contact information page, add a best bet with search phrases like customer service, contact us, and opening
hours.
You want a search phrase to return specific content. For example, if someone searches for
health insurance, display the health insurance card application form page on top.
You have a Special offers page, which appears in search results when searching for offers, but
is rarely clicked. Create a best bet for the page and give it a title like Unbelievable Deals, while
leaving the original content untouched.
Adding best bets
Best bets are not enabled by default—developers need to enable them.
1. From edit view, select Find >Manage. The Statistics screen appears.
2. If one or more search terms that you want to promote via best bets appear in the Search Phrase
list, select the ones you want, then Create best bets. You can modify the search terms on the
Optimization screen.
Otherwise, select the Optimization screen > Best Bets and use the Phrases field to enter one
or more search phrases.
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The site visitor must enter all words in the search phrase exactly to retrieve the content.
Stemming is not supported.
If a best bet contains several search phrases, and any of them matches the site visitor's
input, the best bet content appears at the top of search results.
3. At the Target Content field, specify content to appear when a site visitor searches for any
search phrase. To assign an Episerver page, image, video, or asset, select Local and navigate
to it. To assign an external page, click External link and insert a URL with a protocol identifier,
such as http://.
4. If you selected an Episerver page, its title and description appear. Modify them as desired. For
example, enter more compelling text to encourage a site visitor to click the result.
If you selected an external page, enter a relevant title and description.
Editing best bets
The bottom of the Optimization page displays current best bets.
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Manually optimizing search results | 23
1. Using the context menu, click Edit. The screen is populated with the current values.
2. Change as needed.
3. Click Save best bet.
Deleting best bets
Best bets typically have a limited life, so maintain them continuously to ensure that outdated promotions are removed.
1. Using the context menu, click Delete.
2. Confirm.
Effect of publication and expiration dates on best bets
Best bets respect content publication and expiration dates, and that information is presented on the
Best Bets screen.
So, while you can apply a best bet to unpublished content, the best bet only affects search results when
the content is published. Also, if published content expires, a best bet no longer affects search results,
although you can still see it on the Best Bets screen.
Best bets for catalog entries
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If Episerver Commerce is installed on your website, you can promote content using the catalog content
selector in best bets view. You can define best bets for products and variants as well as images in the
catalog.
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Manually optimizing search results | 25
Adding related queries
Use related queries to create suggestions associated with a search phrase, guiding visitors to certain
search patterns.
Episerver Find automatically generates suggestions from site visitors who also searched for the same
phrase. You can manually add related queries that are not automatically generated because users are
not entering those search terms. By manually adding related queries, you create desirable search patterns that are used as the website evolves. For example, on a travel website, to searches for Spain, add
related queries for Barcelona and Madrid. Or, on an e-commerce site, to searches for accessories, add
handbags and shoes.
Creating related queries
You can apply a related query to a specific website and a specific language.
1. From edit view, select Find > Manage. The Statistics screen appears.
2. If search terms that you want to use for related queries appear in the Search Phrase list, select
them then Create related queries. You can modify the search terms on the Optimization
screen.
Otherwise, select the Optimization screen > Related Queries and use the Phrases field to
enter one or more related queries.
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3. In the Suggestions field, enter related terms by which users might want to search. You can
apply several phrases to the same query. For example, the search term training has course and
school as related queries.
4. Click Add related query.
5. To change the position of a suggestion, click the context menu then select Move Up or Move
Down. The screen position affects the presentation order of related queries.
Adding synonyms for similar phrases
Sometimes, site visitors enter a search term does not occur in your content, even though your site has
content of interest to them. To fix this problem, create a synonym list. If a site visitor searches for any
term in the list, the search returns results for it and the synonym. For example:
Phrases (terms not in your content but which site visitors submit while searching): bill, payment,
pay, fee
Synonym (occurs in your site content): tuition
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Manually optimizing search results | 27
If a site visitor enters bill into a search field that uses synonyms, the Synonyms feature adds OR tuition
to the query. So, content containing tuition is returned even though it was not submitted as a search
term.
The Synonym feature typically produces more hits. So, while site visitors do no more work, Episerver
Find greatly increases their chances of finding the right information.
Examples
You have a Special offers page. It appears in search results when searching for offer, but site visitors often enter deal when searching. Create a synonym list with phrase: deal; synonym: offer.
Phrases: iPhone, Nexus, Galaxy (three 1-word phrases)
Synonym: smart phone (2-word synonym)
Phrases: e-mail, telephone, people, twitter (four 1-word phrases)
Synonym: contact (1-word synonym)
Unidirectional versus bidirectional synonyms
When creating a synonym list, you decide if it is unidirectional or bidirectional.
Unidirectional. If a site visitor submits a phrase on the list, Episerver Find adds the synonym to
the query. But, if a visitor submits the synonym, phrases on the list are not added to the query.
Bidirectional. If a visitor submits the synonym or any term on the phrases list, the synonym and
the term are added to the query.
On the Synonyms screen, an icon indicates a list's direction.
Example
If recycling is a unidirectional synonym to dump, you get hits for recycling when searching for
dump, but you do not get hits for dump when searching for recycling.
If recycling is a bidirectional synonym for dump, you get hits for dump when searching for recyc-
ling, and hits for recycling when searching for dump.
Keywords versus synonyms
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Synonyms apply to site content (or content in the selected language). However, you must add SEO
keywords to each content item.
Also, global search engines ignore synonyms, but make extensive use of keywords.
Adding Synonyms
Synonyms are usually language-specific but you can apply them to all languages.
1. From edit view, select Find > Manage. The Statistics screen appears.
2. If search terms you want to use for synonyms appear in the Search Phrase list, click them,
then select Create synonyms. You can modify the search terms on the Optimization screen.
Otherwise, select the Optimization screen > Synonyms.
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3. In the Phrases field, enter one or more synonym phrases that do not occur in your site content
but which site visitors might submit while searching. Each phrase can have up to three words.
You can enter an unlimited number of phrases. To learn more about phrases and synonyms, see
Adding synonyms for similar phrases.
The search term must exactly match a phrase (stemming is not supported). For
example, vegetable does not exactly match vegetables. As a workaround, enter two
phrases: vegetable and vegetables.
4. In the Synonym field, enter a term (up to three words) that exists in your website content.
Episerver Find adds the synonym to the query when a site visitor enters any phrase in the list.
5. If you want the synonym list to be bidirectional, check the Bidirectional box. See also: Unidirectional versus bidirectional synonyms.
Autocomplete
Autocomplete suggests search phrases as a site visitor types characters into a search field.
The suggestion list becomes more precise as a user types more characters.
If a site visitor selects a suggestion, Episerver Find executes a query using that term. Autocomplete
speeds up the search experience when it correctly predicts words being typed.
Sources of autocomplete suggestions
Episerver Find provides two sources of autocomplete suggestions.
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Manually entered, on the Find Optimization screen's Autocomplete tab.
Automatically generated, based on previous searches that resulted in at least one hit.
Manually-added suggestions take precedence over system-generated ones. For example, if a search
for polic results in one user clicking a search result that uses police, Episerver Find makes police an
autocomplete suggestion for polic. But, if you manually add policy as a suggestion, that term appears
above police in the suggestion list.
Usage recommendations
Base autocomplete suggestions on search keywords for targeted content. For example, if your
website sells bicycles, add the following suggestions to appear when a site visitor types ro.
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For a new website, manually add autocomplete suggestions for important words. Even if no previous searches for them have been made, the suggestions direct site visitors to appropriate
pages.
Adding, editing and deleting autocomplete phrases
You can define autocomplete suggestions for a specific language and a specific website. To create a
suggestion, follow these steps.
1. From edit view, select Find > Manage > Optimization.
2. In the Phrase field, enter autocomplete suggestions (one at a time).
The Autocomplete screen displays only suggestions that were manually added on this
screen—it does not display suggestions based on previous, successful searches.
Use context menu options to edit or delete an autocomplete suggestion.
Changing the order of autocomplete phrases
The order of suggestions in the Autocomplete list determines their sequence in a search field's suggestion list.
To change the order of suggestions, follow these steps:
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1. Select the suggestion you want to move.
2. Drag it to the new position.
3. When you see a blue line below the drop position, release the mouse button.
Optimizing multiple sites and languages
Because search optimization is often language-specific, Episerver Find supports multiple languages
and websites. Specifically, you can apply best bets or related queries to one or all websites and languages.
Websites, languages and indexes
At the top of the Optimization screen, use the drop-downs to choose a website or language, or both, to
view statistics and perform search optimization.
Find needs only one main index. Multiple websites often share an index. When you add a website, Find
adds the new content to the existing index.
You can use language-specific indexes to increase search precision with strategies like language tagging. For example, use word stemming to identify fish as the English root word for fishing and fisher.
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Manually optimizing search results | 33
When site visitors search a multi-language website, each language version of content appears separately in search results.
You must order index creation and multi-language index support from Episerver. You should
enable desired languages during site setup.
The following examples illustrate search optimization with multiple websites and languages.
EXAMPLE: Enabling languages and optimizing search
You create a "Fall Fashion" page in the master language, in English (see image). Now, you want to
enable Danish and Swedish on the website, and translate the page into those languages. You also want
to apply search optimization techniques to promote the translated content. It is assumed that you
enabled Swedish and Danish in the website's index.
Translate the page into Swedish and Danish.
Because you enabled Swedish and Danish in the index, the "Fall Fashion" page appears in results when searching for tröjor and trøjer, the Swedish and Danish words for cardigans, even
though the page contains the singular form cardigan (tröja and trøje).
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Create a best bet for the "Fall Fashion" page to promote it when someone searches for cardigans
or jeans. You do not have to create best bets for the Swedish and Danish versions—Episerver
Find automatically displays the translated versions. If a best bet's content is not translated,
Episerver Find displays the master language version as a fallback language.
Add jeans as a one-way synonym for trousers in English. If a site visitor searches for trousers,
the "Fall Fashion" page appears at the top of search results.
Because it is a one-way synonym, a search for jeans does not return pages containing
trousers.
Create the corresponding language-specific synonym pair for jeans in Swedish (byxor) and Danish (bukser).
Assume that the new style brand is replacing the old XX brand in the new collection. Add style as
a synonym for XX, applying to all languages. Visitors searching for the XX brand also see results
for the style brand, regardless of language.
EXAMPLE: Adding websites and optimizing search
This example continues the previous one by creating two new campaign websites with targeted content: one for fashion and one for traveling in addition to the default website. All three websites share an
index and have the same languages enabled.
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Enable the desired languages in each new website, so editors can create and translate content in
the sites.
Because the campaign websites are new and have their own URLs, the statistics views are
empty until visitors generate traffic and queries.
All websites share an index, so you have best bets, related queries, or autocomplete suggestions defined the campaign websites.
Similarly, any language-specific search optimization for all websites also applies to the campaign websites.
By definition, synonyms apply to all websites. Synonyms can be language-specific, as
explained the style brand example above.
Because the campaign websites have different content (fashion and traveling), you can add website-specific related queries. For example, on the travel website, searching for warm (English)
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might suggest tropical destinations, like Jamaica. Searching for warm on the fashion website
might suggest cardigans or sweaters.
Add website-specific autocompletion of search phrases. For instance, if a visitor enters car on
the fashion website, an autocomplete suggestion might be cardigans. On the travel website, the
suggestion might be car rental.
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Configuring Find | 37
Configuring Find
You need specific access rights to access the features in Episerver Find.
A system administrator or developer can configure Episerver Find search options in admin view, which
include the following search-specific tasks:
exploring the search index
configuring search connectors
clearing the index and statistics
See Administering the website in the CMS Administrator User Guide for general site administration features.
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Boosting results through properties
This topic is intended for administrators and developers with administration access rights in
Episerver.
Episerver Find has default properties, such asTitle, Summary, and Content, that are automatically
mapped to corresponding content properties. Each property has a weight setting that affects search result rankings. You can adjust the weight settings, which is called boosting.
You should boost weight settings if your site has specific and well-defined content types. For example,
if your site hosts scientific articles whose summaries are generally well-written and of great importance,
increase the Summary weight so it has a greater impact on search rank.
Changing weight settings
1. From edit view, select Find > Configure > Boosting. Default properties appear on the left of the
screen.
Title. Content title.
Content. Web page content.
Summary. The introduction, summary, abstract, or similar property type.
Document content. The content of an asset, such as a PDF or Word document.
2. In the Weight column, click a box to change a property's weight.
3. Click Save.
Notes about changing weight settings
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To test the impact of property weight changes, click Preview the boosting effect from the right
side of the Boosting screen.
To revert the changes, click Reset to default values from the Boosting screen, under the list of
properties.
These settings affect search results for all content types and all languages on all websites in
your implementation.
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Clearing the index and reindexing
You need specific access rights to access features in Episerver Find.
You can clear (that is, remove) the Episerver Find index and statistics. You typically do so during website development, after making extensive changes to content properties, or when reorganizing or removing content. You might also clear statistics after testing new functionality.
After you clear the index, re-index the website.
Clearing the index
When clearing the index, you remove all content from it, and have an option to also clear statistics.
Index clearing operations are permanent—you cannot reverse them.
1. From edit view, select Find > Configure > Index.
2. Click Clear index
3. Re-index the website. See Clearing the index and reindexing.
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Re-indexing the website
1. Log into CMS admin view.
2. Go to Scheduled Jobs.
3. Select the Episerver Find Content Indexing job.
You can start the job manually, or start it on a schedule. See also: Scheduled jobsin the
CMS Administrator User Guide.
You should re-index your site under any of the following conditions:
After you clear the index, (because it is empty).
If automatic indexing failed, or content must be reindexed for another reason.
You changed content access rights, because automatic indexing does not detect those
changes.
Removing statistics
Removing statistics
1. From edit view, select Find > Configure > Index.
2. Click Clear statistics.
If you clear statistics, statistics view is empty until new statistics are collected.
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Adding connectors
You need specific access rights to access features in Episerver Find. Connectors require the
extended version of Find.
A search connector lets Episerver Find search content outside your website, such as an external blog
related to your website. The connector lets your site visitors find the blog posts among your site's
search results.
While Episerver Find pushes content to the search engine instantly, a connector crawls external websites on a specified schedule.
Configuring connectors
To access the Connectors screen, from edit view, select Find > Configure > Connectors. To view
on-screen help, click Show Help in the top right corner. The following points supplement the on-screen
help.
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Adding connectors | 43
By default, two connector types are available: Crawler and RSS/Atom. The connector type
determines which configuration options appear below theType drop-down.
If you choose Crawler type, you can fine-tune indexing by excluding media types such as style
sheets, JavaScript, and XML files. See also: Media Types. Find excludes the following media
types from indexing by default.
text/css
text/javascript
text/ecmascript
application/x-pointplus
application/x-javascript
application/javascript
application/ecmascript
Click Advanced fine tuning of indexing to further limit indexing.
Exclude query strings that are part of a link. For example, exclude crawling campaign
tracking parameters (such as utm_source, used by Google Campaigns) to avoid unintentionally updating a campaign counter.
Specify parts of a website to crawl but not index, or to not crawl at all. You may want to
crawl but not index to index search links to other pages, but not the content on those
pages.
Specifying an indexing interval.
Although you set a schedule in local time, it is converted to coordinated universal time
(UTC) so it occurs at the same time regardless of server location. However, you must
manually adjust local time when needed, such as for daylight savings time.
Viewing connectors and indexing jobs
The connectors list (at the bottom of the screen) shows status and scheduling information for all indexing jobs.
You can manually refresh a connector's indexing status. If completed, last completion time
appears.
You can edit or delete any connector from its context menu. For example, you can update its
schedule.
You can manually start and stop indexing jobs.
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Exploring the index
You need specific access rights to access features in Episerver Find.
Most Episerver Find features are built on the search index, which stores and provides quick access to
data collected by the search engine. Without an index, the search would be much slower because each
query would have to search through all site data.
Episerver Find pushes content to the search index as it is published, so updates occur in near real time.
Depending on how the index is set up, it can contain information about all types of content, including
various file types and community comments.
To view your search index, from edit view, select Find > Overview.
Reviewing the index overview screen
The index overview summarizes your search index at the current time. If your environment hosts multiple websites, the index is shared among them, and you can explore each site's index.
The Index section displays the index name and .NET API version number.
The Document Types section displays the total number of indexed objects, and the number of
objects of each type. While most objects are page types, Find also indexes other website
objects.
The CMS Content section summarizes each site's indexed content. The screen displays the
total number of indexed objects for the entire structure and for each site. You also can see the distribution per page type and languages for each site.
A language version of a page is treated as a separate object in the index.
Reviewing the Explore screen
The Explore screen displays index details, such as when a page was last indexed. Find lists the total
indexed content, and you can filter by content type. You also can search for indexed content using
query syntax.
Click an item to see its details. For example, you can view when an object was indexed, its IDs, and the
indexed content, which is useful when you set up and finetune the index.
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Access rights
You need specific access rights to access features in Episerver Find.
Episerver access rights lets site administrators control which users can access components of the
Episerver platform. To get access Episerver Find features, a user must be a member of one of the following groups:
Administrators
WebAdmins
WebEditors and SearchAdmins (to access the Episerver edit view and search features only)
Because most Episerver users are not members of Administrators or WebAdmins, they must have
membership in both SearchAdmins and WebEditors to access Episerver Find features in admin view.
By default, these groups are configured in Episerver, but if the SearchAdmins group does not exist, create it.
See also: Access rights in the CMS Administrator User Guide.
When you perform a search, Episerver Find does not filter results according to user access
rights. However, when you set up the Episerver CMS integration, you can deploy access-right
filtering of content. For more information, see Access rights on Episerver World.
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Index
optimization
A
best bets 19
access rights
find
autocomplete
12
46
manual 18
29
multiple
R
related queries
find
25
S
languages 32
B
search
multiple sites 32
best bets
19
optimizing search
adding
21
overview
deleting
12
statistics
16
9
23
statistics
related queries
editing
optimization
14
25
22
Find, clearing
41
search, view
16
suggestions, search
29
results
boosting property
weights, Find
boosting 38
38
C
search statistics
catalog entries
statistics
16
synonyms
best bets
using with Find
clearing 41
23
connectors
Find
42
synonyms
26
weighting results
38
F
I
Find
index
Find, reindexing
access rights
46
autocomplete
29
O
boosting results
38
optimizing search
connectors
adding 42
index
clearing 40
overview 44
40
14
Q
queries, related
Find
25
26